This was posted on Tuesday, September 12, 2017 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Atlanta-based The Weather Channel, like its brethren down the road CNN, lives off breaking news. And hurricanes are its Super Bowl.
On Friday, as Hurricane Irma was bearing down on Florida, the network had its fifth-biggest day ever in total ratings, averaging 2.6 million viewers prime time and 2.1 million viewers the entire day. The only network to beat it that day was Fox News.
It's possible the network drew even more on Saturday, but Nielsen, which measures ratings, doesn't have those ratings out yet. Why? Ironically, its operations are out of Tampa, which was hit hard by Irma.
Its best hour Friday was 11 p.m. with 3 million viewers.
The network has been largely live for the past two-plus weeks thanks to both Harvey and Irma.
According to a New York Times story that came out this past Saturday, the network "averaged nearly 1.3 million viewers during prime time over the first half of last week, up sharply from an average of 150,000 viewers during the last week of July, when the weather wasn't a story, according to Nielsen."
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